Page 14 of The Powerful Boss She Craves

Ah, so he was worried about that again. It was a subject that, along with their single status, raised its head occasionally. He and Jago travelled a lot and when they were at home they were very self-sufficient. These days, Jabu’s duties were limited, and they knew he felt guilty about living in the large apartment above the garage, his huge salary and the use of a company car.

‘Mkulu, I know that my father never paid you what you were due when we were kids; he was a notorious skinflint and you earned the bare minimum. Jago and me—mostly me—were terrors, Theo was volatile and Liyana was demanding. You dealt with all of us without a word of complaint and with incredible dignity. Jago and I agree that you’ve earned an easy semi-retirement.’

‘But—’

‘Got to go,’ Micah said, running up the stairs. On the landing, he looked down to see Jabu still standing in the hall, his eyes on a black-and-white photograph of Jago, Thadie and himself. Jabu straightened the photograph, nodded once and touched the edge of the frame with his fingertips.

Crisis, Micah thought, averted. But if Jabu was feeling restless then he’d ask Thadie to request his help with the twins for a day or two. He’d come back exhausted after running after those bundles of energy, and his requests for a busier Hadleigh House would die down for a month or two.

He loved Jabu, but his own children running round the rooms of this old house would never happen.

The next day, Ella stood on a wooden deck of The Gate boutique hotel, entranced by the sandstone cliffs of the Golden Gate National Park. The multi layers of the cliff and outcrops fascinated her, with each layer sporting a different colour ranging from black to gold, to red, to orange and ochre. She remembered visiting this area as a child and wondered why she hadn’t been back to the park since then or visited the quaint and artistic town on its doorstep, Clarens.

It was only a three-and-a-half-hour road trip from Johannesburg and they’d left the city at eight that morning. She’d waited for Micah on the pavement outside her apartment block and he’d swung his expensive car into a parking spot a few feet from her. He’d tossed her small suitcase into the boot of the car, handed her the keys and told her he needed to work.

While she drove his car through the city’s traffic and onto highway, busy with trucks and empty of cars, he’d spent the next three hours and twenty minutes on his phone and laptop, frequently both at once. It was only when they’d approached Clarens that he raised his head, closed his laptop and looked around. The on-board navigation system instructed her to bypass the town and head for the Golden Gate National Park, and they turned to the right not far from the towering cliffs and the park’s entrance.

This was their first appointment; they had another this afternoon and one tomorrow morning. They’d toured the grounds of the hotel, looked at the sweet chapel, inspected the kitchens and the function rooms and peeked in on the bride and groom and honeymoon suites. Micah, surprisingly, allowed her to take the lead on questioning the functions manager, and she’d covered all aspects of staging a huge event without letting the owner know she was looking for a wedding venue. Ella looked back into the function room, saw Micah shake the manager’s hand and sighed at the hopeful look on the guy’s face. A Le Roux function would put this place on the map and would be a stunning advertisement for the hotel. Unfortunately, she couldn’t recommend it as an option for his sister’s wedding.

Micah stepped onto the deck, closed the glass door behind him and joined Ella at the railing, holding two bottles of water in his hand. He opened one for her, handed it over and took a long sip. When he lowered the bottle, he sent her an easy grin. ‘Hi,’ he said softly.

‘Hi back,’ she replied equally softly, leaning her forearms on the railing, enjoying the mild breeze coming off the mountains. ‘God, it’s beautiful here.’

Micah nodded. ‘I love this area. It’s one of my favourite places to do trail runs and hike.’

‘It could be one of my favourite places to sit on a deck like this and read a book,’ Ella told him, smiling.

‘I like to be busy,’ Micah told her. That wasn’t news to Ella, as he hadn’t taken a breath for the entire trip from the city, either taking calls, giving orders or banging away on his laptop or phone. She hadn’t minded being ignored. She’d needed the time to think.

When he’d collected her this morning, he’d acted cool and professional and she hadn’t picked up a hint of the attraction she’d seen yesterday. Ella turned over his words about him being attracted to her, wanting her in his arms. Had he meant them or was he just being kind? Had he changed his mind about finding her attractive?

Maybe his attraction was a one-off, one-day thing, a soap bubble hitting a thorn or a piece of spun sugar. There one moment, gone the next. The problem was that his attraction to her might’ve faded, but hers was still raging.

Ella placed her tablet onto the glass-and-wood table to her right. She caught Micah looking at it and tipped her head to the side. ‘What?’

‘Are you sure you’ve got enough space on that to hold all your notes?’

She blushed a little, knowing that her habit of taking down reams of notes, most of them probably a bit unnecessary, was a source of amusement to her work colleagues. ‘I don’t like to miss anything.’

‘Ella, you nearly wrote the equivalent of Proust’sIn Search of Lost Timein two hours.’

She didn’t get the reference so she asked him to explain. ‘It’s supposedly the longest book in the world,’ he said.

‘Ha-ha, funny,’ she said, but her tone lacked heat. ‘It’s important to me that I don’t miss any details, because you never know when a little detail might be important.’

Micah rested a hip on the table and his forearm on his thigh. He was dressed casually today in a pair of tailored blue Chambray shorts—almost the same colour as the sky above—a cream button-down shirt with its sleeves rolled back and a pair of trendy trainers. ‘There’s a story there. Will you tell me?’

It was such a direct question, no hesitating, fudging or judgement, so she shrugged. ‘I lost my mum when I was sixteen and my life became a little chaotic. Order became very important to me. I like making notes and lists.’

‘They make you feel safe, in control,’ Micah observed.

She nodded, surprised at his perception. ‘Yes.’

‘You enjoy planning events, don’t you?’

Ella leaned back against the railing and looked up into his face, noticing the fine lines around his eyes, no doubt from squinting in the sun, just as he was doing now. As if he heard her thoughts, Micah dropped his sunglasses from the top of his head and covered his eyes.

He didn’t give her a chance to answer. ‘I was watching you and you dove into the meeting, completely confident. You asked him a dozen questions I would never have thought about.’

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